Article Bot

Article Bot
by velocd


Article Bot is a script that allows you to assign a user account (preferably an exclusive one) to an article bot that will post RSS feeds in select forums at designated intervals. These articles are derived from RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.

RSS files are assigned to article bots, as well to individual forums, which in turn directs what, when and where your article bot will post.

Features

• Works with RSS versions: 0.9x, 2.0, 1.0, and Atom 0.3
• AdminCP interface for adding/modifying/deleting article bots & rss feeds
• Designate intervals (in minutes) to each RSS feed for when your article bot will post them.
• Requires only 1 file edit (admincp/index.php), allowing ease of upgrading your vBulletin
  without having to remodify files.
• Easy to install. Works best in conjunction with crontab (contab help is inside install.html)

News

• 7/25/04 - Version 1.1 Released
  • Bug Fixes
    • Replaced htmlspecialchars() with htmlentities() in articlebot.php to fully convert special entities from descriptions.
    • Added trim() to thread titles, to prevent double threads from being posted that are merely off by whitespace.
    • New table articlebot_rss_cache for storing a copy of article bot threads, for quicker checking of doubles when posting new threads.
    • Threads are checked in articlebot_rss_cache, so you can permanently remove them from the thread table (you don't have to "soft delete") without worrying about the bot replicating them.
    • Other minor bugs.
  • Features
    • New installer/upgraders for doing the SQL part automatically.
    • Added "label" field to add/modify RSS interface, that allows you to tag a label, e.g. [yahoo], to the beginning of threads, unique to each RSS feed. This might help for better distinction of RSS feeds.
    • Added an option to toggle on/off of building similar threads per RSS feed. Some RSS feeds could hault the script if the building of similar thread results for that feed takes too long (maybe the article thread title is too vague, and matches a lot of results--my guess is it's only a problem on large forums).
    • Added an option to toggle on/off skipping of articles that don't contain descriptions.
    • Regular expression search and replace for article titles and descriptions. This grants you much flexability to filter out things you don't want in your titles or descriptions (given you have some regex experience, I will try to post some patterns in due time.. feel free to add yours )
• 7/11/04 - Version 1.0 Released

Upgrading

• To upgrade, reupload the new PHP and MagpieRSS parser files to their places on your server. Upload upgrade_vx-x (replace the x's with the version you are upgrading to) to /path/to/forums/admincp/, and then execute that script.

Files

• 3 screenshots attached
• articlebot_v1.zip
  • install.html, logo.gif
  • articlebot_admin.php
  • articlebot/
    • rss_cache.inc
    • rss_fetch.inc
    • rss_parse.inc
    • rss_utils.inc
    • extlib/
      • Snoopy.class.inc

RSS Feeds

There are several in the install.html, but if you're looking for more than you could ever want, check out NewsIsFree's directory:

http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/bycat/


Remember to click install if you use this hack.

Also be sure to read through the what you haven't of the thread before asking a question, for it may have been answered.

[Megareus Rex]

Nope, I tried that too. Besides, the variables tell which RSS feed to pick up if the site has multiple different topics of RSS feeds.

[ambrosious]

I've been using the feeds that are XML format, cause the others just dont seem to work. Also, put the "includes" function on your index.php. That helped too.

[jluerken]

Originally Posted by ambrosious

I've been using the feeds that are XML format, cause the others just dont seem to work. Also, put the "includes" function on your index.php. That helped too.

Putting the includes function in the index.php will increase the load of your board heavily.

4velocd: It would be nice to have an option to delete threads posted from the RSS Bot after X days.

[roundhost]

mines working great! All i need to do is get the cron to work it just refuses to cron!

[roundhost]

Ok i got the cron working but i get this error:

<html dir="" lang="">
<head>
	<title>YoungCoders</title>


</head>
<body>


<br />
<br />
<br />

<table class="tborder" cellpadding="" cellspacing="" border="0" width="70%" align="center">
<tr>
	<td class="tcat"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
	<td class="panelsurround" align="center">
	<div class="panel">
		<div align="">
	
				
			<!-- main error message -->
			
			
			<blockquote><p>Unable to add cookies, header already sent.<br />
File: <br />
Line: 0<br /></p></blockquote>
			
				
			<!-- / main error message -->			
		
		
		</div>
	</div>
	<!--
	<div style="margin-top:px">
		<input type="submit" class="button" value="" accesskey="s" onclick="history.back(1); return false" />
	</div>
	-->
	</td>
</tr>
</table>

<br />


<!-- forum jump -->
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" align="center">
<tr>
	<td></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- / forum jump -->


<br />



</body>
</html>

What should i do to fix this?

[RS25com]

Is there any support for this? Am I missing something? I really like all the features, but cannot get it to work.

[DFence]

I also have the "Error: There is no file located at http://xml.newsisfree.com/feeds/14/1614.xml" Problem. I've tried every possibility with a dozen seperate feeds.

No way. It still shows this error....

Has anyone solved this yet?

Thanks and regards
DFence

[Holidazed]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

It's the RSS feed man. Try finding another feed.

Also, fix the crontab to make it automatic, so you don't have to manually keep putting in the articlebot.php url for it to update.

Put in a command like this:

php -q /home/yourusername/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php

No it is not the feed. I used the other RSS hack and it works fine. That hack has other problems which is why I went to this one.

ideas?

[Pagandream]

hello,

sorry for my "ugly" English!

Is there a way that the Forum doesn't count the Post from the Bot? I made a Extra-Forum were Post will not be counted, Post from normal Users are not counted but the Post from the Bot are still counted.

bye

[xug]

I Installed this on V3.0.3 with the cronjob and everything seems to look fine except my date stamp, everything what is posted, even yesterday, has a post stamp of 'Today 12:00PM'

What could be wrong here?